Break out your Dr. Evil jokes, if you've got any left. Facebook just announced that it will be acquiring Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app and recent addition to the Play Store family, for a cool billion dollars. You read that right. With a "b". Billion. To answer all the critics who were wondering what's so cool about Instagram: a billion dollars.

Instagram assures us in a blog post on the subject that the app will stay the exact same as it always has been. Except better. But still the same. It remains to be seen just what Facebook will do with Instagram. This wouldn't be the first investment that Facebook has made into its photo-sharing services, but it's by far the biggest. In fact, in terms of users, it's the largest product Facebook has ever purchased. At the price of $1bn, Facebook clearly doesn't plan to just let its investment stew.

Check out the full press release for more info:

MENLO PARK, CALIF.—April 9, 2012—Facebook announced today that it has reached an agreement to acquire Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices.

The total consideration for San Francisco-based Instagram is approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and shares of Facebook. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close later this quarter.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, posted about the transaction on his Timeline:

I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram's strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

That's why we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram's experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook's strong engineering team and infrastructure.

This is an important milestone for Facebook because it's the first time we've ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

We're looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we're going to be able to build together.

About Facebook

Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to make the world more open and connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

Eric is a snarky technophile with a taste for the unusual. When he's not obsessing about Android, you can usually find him obsessing about movies, psychology, or the perfect energy drink. Eric weaves his own special blend of snark, satire, and comedy into all his articles.

Comments

Big Boosie

I just got an Instagram and now I'm forced to delete it!

Tim

Remember the vitriol from iPhone Instagram users when Android got a version? Now imagine that when they learn their special little community has been bought out by Facebook. It's going to be comedy of epic proportions.

CodeMonkey

Egad. Just came here from Twitter to make a similar comment..

Big Boosie

They should make a game about them "Angry iSheep"

iofractal

I had it then deleted it, not impressed

Darkmyth

Funny for I always thought the Big G would take this step.

Chromie

Google is not that stupid to buy a "picture sharing social network with some sepia effects".

http://ggkthx.org Sumatori-kun

True. Google has their own shittier network called Picasa.

mgamerz

So you know, app updates that don't do Jack, unneeded permissions and of course, useless changelogs.

Danny365

Seriously, why?! What's the point of this? People prefer sharing their pictures via Instagram to Facebook for a reason, and now they get together. I'm pretty sure they will ruin Instagram...

How can these 2 companies help eachother?

Ryan

I was considering Instagram, now Facebook in the mix. No thank you. of coarse my opinion is only 0.00008% of the worlds.

jeff donuts

i wonder what would happen if u ppl just stopped using facebook? (i dont use it or ever will)

Duffin

Then I wouldn't really ever be able to have easy contact with my extended family. Not everyone goes to FB for stupid games, you know. But, if you have no use for it, more power to you. But, don't think you're so high and mighty because you don't use Facebook, okay?

jeff donuts

sorry im not trying to seem high and mighty i just really have no use for it.plust 99% of the posts are garbage and u know it.

Mgamerz

Your argument would be more convincing if you knew how to spell.

Duffin

That very well may be, and I said it's fine if you have no use for it. But, your comment was arrogant, as if no one could possibly have a use for it. I rarely make any posts myself, but I keep up with happenings with my family that lives in other parts of the country. That's like saying Craigslist is a horrible website because people mostly post junk, despite also being a help to people.

http://ggkthx.org Sumatori-kun

Yeah, just like when you talk to your friends and family in real life, it's all useless shit.

Apparently your ignorance with Facebook is still quite high.

Mgamerz

Was directed at donut not duffin. This reply system is terrible.

jeff donuts

yes it is mr spellcheck police. are u new to the internet?or just trolling?

Skillit

I wouldn't call this a smart move, after all there is no reasonable away to monetize Instangram since the network itself doesn't bring much in terms of personal information in which to target ads for...

Awesome Sauce

HAHAHAHAHA. Everything is a billion dollars now! The only thing this tells me is that they have WAY too much money. Thats like 1,000 Millions. And who in their right mind thinks that if FB gets a hold of it they will make it better!?!? The FB app is one of the worst out there! Oh well, i guess we will just have to wait for the "next big thing"...

sriracha

that seals it, i'll certainly never even try instagram now. i contemplated installing it just to follow and bug the piss out of iphone users, you know, for shits and grins. not any more. eff acebook. eff instagram. eff apple.

i gotta laugh at how the apple users are reacting to this. if everything was "ew" when android joined the party.. lmao now.

golightly

Just deactivated fb too, ugh, I can't escape.

Sam

Dotcom bubble coming soon folks!

brononomous

coming from someone who hasn't had facebook for 3 years now, i find it completely ridiculous that some of you are crying that you'll never consider using instagram because of the purchase.

talking about irony of the iphone users, in the same sentence you talk about how they're reacting but fail to see how pathetic you look. facebook or not, instagram is instagram and doesn't affect my decision to use it or not.

Mgamerz

You obviously have never heard of privacy.

scott

If you really wanted privacy you wouldn't be on the internet.

Steve

That's why I'm not on the internet... Oh, wait

http://ggkthx.org Sumatori-kun

Quoted for fucking truth man. People who cry "Privacy!" on the internet are idiots. You might as well cancel all your billing subscriptions, credit cards, bank accounts, etc.

http://codytoombs.wordpress.com Cody Toombs

Amusing, two companies that have done terrible Android apps just merged, so we can safely assume that their Android presence won't be getting any better. As Skillit pointed out, there's no personal information to harvest. The iOS apps are both fairly decent (but both are known to have some weird annoying bugs), so it's probably not a talent acquisition. It would take a week for a single programmer to add the photo filters to the Facebook app, so this isn't about adding those. In theory, there's no benefit.

I've had a theory about the Timeline feature. When Google+ came out, the biggest complaint everybody made was that it was such a huge time investment to get set up on a new social network, they just weren't sure they wanted to invest the time. Since Facebook is nearly as big as it can get (in terms of active user base), their biggest desire is to keep their users and find ways to keep them on Facebook even longer and to prevent them from straying to other social networks. I think the reason for Timeline was to pressure people into putting even more information into their accounts and make it feel like an even bigger time cost to move that information somewhere else. By grabbing up Instagram, I suspect they plan to make Instagram postings automatically a part of people's photo albums, further adding to the time and trouble necessary for a user to extract all of that info and put it somewhere else. I think I'll write up a blog post on this.

watson387

Post a link when you're done with your blog post. I'd like to read it.

ChumbleSpuzz

Simply click on Cody's name for his wordpress blog

http://codytoombs.wordpress.com Cody Toombs

I'm finishing up the post right now. Probably have it done within the hour unless I'm interrupted again.

As an aside, I really want to get away from WordPress...I'm learning to hate them.

http://codytoombs.wordpress.com Cody Toombs

It's a bit rushed (I've got to run to get some stuff done) but I just got it posted. Thanks for checking it out! :)

Also, better delete your Instagram account BEFORE Facebook owns it or you'll never be able to completely delete it and they'll own all your photos. Before anyone tries to argue with me about it, try to delete your Facebook account. You can't. It will remove it from view of the public, but all it takes is your username and password and it comes right back.

Sootie

Nope it is possible to delete it completely, search for it, there is a link and you have to completely not touch it for two weeks but it is possible I know mine doesn't exist anymore.

And I have never once missed it....

Tkun

I just don't understand how this acquisition will improve Instagram or Facebook at all. It seems Facebook just wants to dominate the Internet.

siguy

I was thinking about getting on instagram but now with facebook in the mix, no thanks. I'd rather keep my privacy, thank you very much.

scott

As I said above, if you really wanted privacy, you wouldn't be on the internet. This idea that you can maintain anything like privacy is naive.

http://mgamerzproductions.com Mgamerz

The idea that you can maintain your life without interacting with the internet/computer is naive.

Marthos

There goes the neighborhood!

Freak4Dell

Wonderful...now in addition to the junk posts already on Facebook, I'll have to sift through even more photos with the lame "1950s era" filter applied to them.

watson387

Hahahahahahahaha!!! Title should read "Pointless Social App Integrated Into Bloated Social Network For Tons Of Cash" lol.

http://ggkthx.org Sumatori-kun

But they're not talking about Streamzoo, so it's not pointless.

KRS_Won

it'd be worth a bil if the instagram team can make a decent fb app.

mcstraun69

OMG instagram for 1 billion dollars. I mean I like the service but all you do is add sepia and a frame to your photos and share.

I am going to build a website for sharing something one of these days and sell it. I have no reason to be poor.

arunasena

so with this news we soon expect shittier updates ala facebook official app for android where nothing works

GraveUypo

what? a generic crap app gets sold for 1 billion?

my god how stupid is this social media generation...

might as well make a social joke network app and hope someone buys it for 1 billion too.

watson387

Yeah. The Instagram devs are laughing all the way to the bank. XD

sriracha

facebook and instagram are the social joke networks. smh

http://www.academia-nutcrackers.com Sven Enterlein

Never used instagram, hardly ever use facebook. But the numbers are surely impressive!

http://www.specsx.com/ Specs

Instagram has more than 1 million users and this apps is very useful in facebook yet facebook were not the first to recognize this idea were not able to realize how important this idea to their existing application. So buying it is no brainer for them and one billion dollars is just only a coin compared to what the effect the instagram will bring to the facebook users.

http://www.specsx.com/ Specs

Instagram has more than 1 million users and this apps is very useful in facebook yet facebook were not the first to recognize this idea were not able to realize how important this idea to their existing application. So buying it is no brainer for them and one billion dollars is just only a coin compared to what the effect the instagram will bring to the facebook users.